A Matter of Convenience
by Eevee
Summary: Saeki never believed Waya when he started detailing the calculations they had made the first week in their ridiculously overpriced, ridiculously new apartment, and Waya did not bring it up when sober. Waya/Isumi


If everything else failed to rouse interest, Saeki would circle back to "Waya" and "money", through dryly voiced and always half-abandoned references that would be eagerly backed up by Shindou. The joke was so ancient by now that even Waya himself did little else than roll his eyes when it was brought up; it had only survived so long on the sheer obscurity to people who hadn't known them since they were insei. Isumi had not been around to witness the first ten months of Waya's life as an independent adult, but Saeki's lamentations fit the picture like the final piece of something that never quite had been a puzzle. Waya had learned to use spreadsheets from his mother, and he eagerly used and abused this knowledge in their daily life. Isumi almost worried about the glee with which he would spend the evening the pay came in on managing their money and calculating surplus funds that _one day_ would go to some saving account. But that theoretical day remained just one step in front of them no matter how many months passed, and extra money was never enough to be worth more than something nice for dinner that day.

That puzzled Shindou to no end -

"Yeah, and that's why you still live with your parents."

"Oh, _shut up_, Waya!"

- or did, at least, until the day their rent came up in conversation.

"What, what the hell? Is that even legal?"

"You're forgetting the location, Shindou," Waya said in the resigned tones of somebody who knew that the message wouldn't get through. He did not look up from the pile of kifu that he was bravely trying to sort by date for the purpose of archiving, of which he was doing a surprisingly effective job for simultaneously keeping up with a conversation with Hikaru Shindou. "And the building is brand new. And it's big."

"Yeah," Shindou agreed, and slumped back in his chair to stare at the ceiling, tall enough to require a stepladder to change the lightbulbs, "yeah, why'd you have to go and get a place this huge, anyway?"

"Because it was open," Waya answered tersely, and Shindou, who was still staring at the ceiling with one arm thrown over the back of his chair and never had been one to notice when to let a matter drop, continued speaking.

"Yeah, but the rent is still insane - do you even make that much money? Akari made me come with her to look at apartments around half the city, and none of them were anywhere near _this_. Seriously, shouldn't you guys consider - "

"Two guys looking for a place together don't get to be picky, Shindou!"

The kitchen was abruptly silent as Shindou sat up in his chair and Waya stared him down for fifteen seconds, leaning over the table with both hands planted firmly on cheap printing paper. It lasted until Waya jerked his head down and away from Shindou to collect the sheets scattered over the tabletop with brisk, angry movements. He piled them on the folder spread wide open in front of him and slapped it shut with enough force to almost send some of them to the floor. The chair nearly toppled over when he stood from the table and stalked out of the room without a word. He left Shindou and Isumi in a sudden hush, pillowed by the faint, soft sounds of traffic from five stories below.

Shindou looked struck. Probably, Isumi thought, because it never had occured to him that some people might announce that the apartment was occupied only after introductions had been made. He tried not to pay too much attention to the way his stomach felt oddly weightless when he didn't-think-about how it also could be because Waya had gone and mentioned _that_ to Shindou.

It had been Waya who insisted on giving him that talk - "I mean, he has absolutely no concept of discretion. I don't want him to figure it out on his own and have some kind of public meltdown over it" - and Isumi had never inquired about Shindou's opinions beyond Waya's initial report about him "being fine with it as long as we don't bring it up in front of him". For that matter, Isumi had never been sure whether that condition had been Shindou's own or one deducted by Waya, or even what "bringing it up in front of him" meant in practice. Shindou had never acted any different around them, and Isumi didn't know what to say as the silence left by Waya's uncharacteristic outburst lingered for long enough to become awkward between somebody who had known each other for as long as Shindou had known both of them. Shindou kept staring after where Waya had disappeared, before he turned back to stare at the table for another minute. Then, he started talking about some movie he had suffered on Fujisaki-san's order and how he absolutely did not want the two of them to subject themselves to it, and Isumi listened and smiled and didn't know how he could tell him that it wasn't such a big deal.

When twenty minutes had passed and Waya still failed to return, Shindou left with a final, guilty glance towards the closed bedroom door. Isumi had not mentioned to him that it had been more than a year since the last time he or Waya had been to any movies at all.

*

It was always about money, and about how badly Waya had managed his when he moved away from home without preparing for the freedom to make every mistake he could ever want to. It had been brutal, Waya's mother had confessed to Isumi, but it had worked: Yoshitaka had learned to be more careful with his finances after nearly a year of begging loans from his friends towards the end of the month. But this was about more than that, and Shindou - whose mother probably refused to let him move out on his own - had no reason to think far enough beyond his own sphere of living to understand the difference.

But Isumi had lived it right there at Waya's side, and was deep enough into it for Waya to acknowledge his opinions. Waya wasn't the kind to willingly listen too closely to others when topics other than Go were discussed, but Isumi had never doubted the wisdom of talking about it and finding a solution rather than letting things fester while you pretended the problems weren't there. Waya was not as comfortable with it, but he no longer turned off his mobile phone for hours to an end whenever they fought. Isumi found him on the bedroom floor with his laptop open in front of him, and Waya started talking without being prompted.

"The worst thing is that he's right. It's madness that we're paying this kind of oney just for a place to stay. I mean, look at the people living here - this isn't a place for honest working men."

"I wouldn't say that the others here - "

"I mean _normal_ people don't live in places like this. You know Uesugi down the hall?"

"Uesugi-san?"

"He's a novelist!" Waya said as though this fact alone made his meaning clear, "a _novelist_! He's famous! Have you seen his car?"

"It's hard not to."

"I saw him on TV the other day, no kidding! _That_ kind of people, is what I mean."

"People who have sex on the balcony in the middle of the day?"

"Her husband deserves it. What's the use in marrying if you're going to work three hundred and sixty-six days a year?"

"To pay the rent, maybe? Waya," Isumi said softly, reaching out a hand to let his fingers brush against Waya's cheek, "remember what it was like before. It was nearly an hour between my parents' house and your place, and the walls were so thin and the girl in the room across yours kept track of the comings and goings of the entire house - "

" - and we had to listen to Daimon and one of his three or four girlfriends going at it every night," Waya finished wearily, but the left corner of his mouth tugged a little higher when he finally lifted his eyes from the from the computer. He didn't look away from Isumi as he reached out to lower the lid, and it became a little more like a smile as he tilted his head to let Isumi tangle his fingers in his hair. "Inoue started asking why you were over all the time towards the end. I think she guessed. But this - "

"This is better than that, at least," Isumi said, and felt the strands of Waya's hair tighten around his fingers as he clenched his fist lightly. The shadow-smile didn't last long enough to become confidence, but Waya also did not say anything more as Isumi used his hold on his hair to pull him closer and remind him why they had accepted the conditions of the contract.

He remembered what it was like to just go down to the convenience store to pick up rice and tofu whenever they ran out, and while it had been a different kind of freedom of a different kind of life - and he deny that he missed it sometimes - he had never thought that it had been a mistake to trade it for this. It wasn't anywhere near ideal to be living in an apartment two price levels above them, but it was better than a drafty room in a boarding house that didn't allow overnight visits and never left the residents deprived of any details in the lives of the others.

But it had brought out that slightly hysterical side of Waya's relationship to money. Shopping was an activity that took the planning of a small-scale warfare, and usually all the good spirits of its victims. Even with Waya warm and sleepy in the early afternoon sun coming through the window, Isumi did not feel better about having to be the bearer of bad news.

"We're out of toilet paper."

*

It wasn't the fault of Shindou and his clearly malnourished bowel movements, but Isumi didn't want to take the risk of initiating some organized monitoring of the amount of hygiene products consumed between the two of them. Experience, anyway, dictated that Waya would have gotten it out of his system by the time they reached the super market with the help of Kanna-san, whose husband did not take the car to work.

"Does that Shindou guy come over to your place just to shit?"

"Nah, he moved himself into our kitchen because his mom won't let him move out. And it's not like he cooks."

"It's not like you ever did anything except for the dishes in the kitchen before you moved in with Isumi-kun, either," Kanna-san said dryly, and Waya didn't answer because his sister might actually believe him if he explained how much money could be saved by bringing leftovers instead of eating out every day.

"I just hope you realize how lucky you are that I can drive you around like this," Kanna-san continued as she pulled into the parking lot, and Waya rolled his eyes as he stepped out of the car and bent down to deliver the answer.

"Yeah, yeah, thank you ever so much for putting off the dusting to take pity on your hard-working family."

"Normal people don't plan shopping trips like others plan vacations," Kanna-san groused as she shifted the gear stick, but she smiled wryly as Isumi got out to follow Waya.

It had started with a woman whose smiled stiffened when the broker introduced the two of them; who had been regretful to inform them that the apartment was occupied by a couple who had been there just before them, and shot the utterly polite and professional Ando-san a look that spoke volumes.

When the man in the polished shoes and shades that probably had cost more than a small car had just nodded in the same disinterest and said that he wasn't sure about the squeaking of the door but he couldn't imagine that it was something a drop of oil couldn't fix, they had signed the contract without discussion.

"We're going to starve," Waya had said in a voice silenced as through delirium when they walked out of Ando-san's office with the papers and the keys, "we're going to live like kings, and there won't be any money for food."

Isumi had wanted to sit him down and remind him how they had talked and planned and _wanted_ this. "Don't be so dramatic," he had said instead, even as he had wondered the same thing himself.

Shindou liked the view, Ochi liked the location, and Saeki-san liked Mouri-san next door whose husband had only been observed once, in the grey hours of the morning. All three of them, as well as everybody else who was in the know, seemed to think that the homemade lunches were some sad honeymoon habit. Isumi didn't particularly care what they thought; Waya only told them the truth when Saeki-san was drunk enough to actually ask and he was drunk enough to actually answer. Saeki never believed Waya when he started detailing the calculations they had made the first week in their ridiculously overpriced, ridiculously _new_ apartment, and Waya did not bring it up when sober.

In the end, Waya's prediction had not come true; they didn't, as he had prophetized, _starve_, but they had become experts at keeping expenses to a minimum. Turn down the heat, turn off the lights, and nobody watches TV these days, anyway. There was money to be saved from preparing food from scratch, from buying large quantities at cheap supermarkets and having the leftovers for lunch the next day. The scouting for bargains and stocking up for months ahead was an essential part of their lives. It hadn't been because of romantic sentiments that they learned to cook.

These shopping excursions had not been happy ones in the beginning, when they usually ended with the request that something be extracted from the bill, when Kanna-san insisted on coming in with them and wondering why Waya was being so "stingy". When Waya put the groceries away without a word and left the apartment for at least an hour afterwards, and when the preparations for the next trip took so much time. But they had become a well-practiced ritual, a routine for all parties involved, so Waya longer refused to look Isumi in they eyes as they unpacked, and Kanna-san had stopped asking and started bringing along a book.

"Tuna. Five cans," said Waya, and Isumi scanned the shelves for the cheapest brand as Waya looked for something on the other side of the aisle.

"Shindou didn't mean it, you know," he said as he put the cans into the cart and took hold of a corner of the shopping list in Waya's hand, leaning over to see better.

"Shindou is an idiot," Waya answered and glanced at where Isumi was trying to decipher the list, "pickles. The ones with the blue label. His life would be so much easier if he had learned to think before he opens his mouth."

"He felt bad about it."

"Then maybe he won't be nagging about it again."

"I don't mind this, you know," Isumi said, but didn't know how to continue when Waya looked up in confusion. He was still holding onto the shopping list, but was suddenly acutely aware of how his hand had come to rest against Waya's. They had probably been standing too close together for too long if anybody were paying attention to them, but they had been sleeping next to each other for so long that it Isumi no longer quite noticed when he touched Waya in public.

"I really don't think it's a big deal," he finally continued, "compared to the alternative, I mean. It gets annoying sometimes, but... I just wish you wouldn't be so upset about it. I'm not."

Waya only looked at him for another few seconds, until he turned lowered his hand and turned away with a cynical smile.

"We're always short on money because we're renting an apartment that we can't really afford. And we're staying there because of some old hag who didn't want to rent her rooms to two guys."

"And I don't mind it," Isumi said, "I don't. Waya, Shindou didn't know, and probably wouldn't think it was something to get upset over if he had. I'm not upset over it - I can live with cheap tuna and bad shampoo if it means that we can stay there."

"You think that place is worth all the bad food?" Waya asked doubtfully, and Isumi shook his head, reaching down between them to take Waya's limp hand, more properly this time.

"I think it's worth it for the reason it was worth it in the first place," and Waya looked disbelieving, and then he looked like he could cry, and then he closed his eyes with a snort of laughter and lifted his free hand to his face. He leaned his forehead against Isumi's shoulder for a moment, and shifted his hand to wrap his fingers around Isumi's palm.

"Even with all the bad food, huh," he said, but he was smiling when he stepped back to straighten out the crumbled paper in his hand.


End file.
